1. IntelliPanel

If you're at home, stop what you're doing and listen. You can probably hear a low hum. That's the sound of the average UK home wasting £37 a year on standby, causing unnecessary carbon emissions into the bargain. While we wait for standby to be phased out - a move backed by environmentalists and the Currys boss, John Clare - there are standby killers such as the Intellipanel, a glorified multi-plug. Just plug your desktop PC or Mac into the master socket and your monitor, speakers, printer, external hard drive and more into the remaining seven: every time you power off the desktop, everything else is switched off entirely. The Bye Bye Standby does a similar job for your entire home, but it requires your active involvement with a remote.Cost: £30Available from: Oneclickpower.co.uk

2. DIY Kyoto Wattson

Remember the Electrisave gizmo that Justin "ethical man" Rowlatt used to measure his electricity usage at home? Well, the Wattson is its glamorous, iPod-like cousin - a gadget that glows blue when you're using little electricity and flashes red when you're consuming a lot. In case that doesn't drive the message home, its bright display shows exactly how many pounds you will have to pay annually, based on what you're using that second.

Once you've lived with one, you'll never again overfill the kettle or leave on unused lights, which should be good for your bank balance as well as the planet. Studies have shown electricity bill savings - and accompanying CO2 cuts - of 3 to 15%.Cost: £125 if you pre-order the standard version; £350 to buy the limited edition version.Available from: Diykyoto.co.uk

3. Roberts Wanderer (R9957)

Inventor and Eel Pie resident Trevor Baylis may have experienced a hard time getting financial backing for his wind-up radio concept - he used to travel the breadth of the UK for pre-arranged pitch meetings only to turned away at the door - but he's certainly been vindicated by its subsequent success. Now, the likes of Roberts and Eton have joined Freeplay in the fray, and Roberts has brought its experience to bear on this little FM wind-up. It's smaller, more handsome and better-sounding than most of its rivals, although the crank isn't the finest and the battery life is slightly bested by its Freeplay peers. Great for the bathroom, camping and picnics, it'll never need new batteries and won't use a watt of carbon-laden electricity.Cost: from £30Available from: Currys and Amazon

4. Solar Technology Freeloader

Clearly, owning enough electronic gadgets to open your own stall in Tokyo's Akhihabara won't gain you entry into the green pantheon, even if you charge them all with a solar charger like this. For those of us with just an iPod, mobile and digicam that need topping up, however, it's ideal. Stick the
Freeloader on a windowsill and its internal battery should be full after five hours, ready to trickle electricity via a selection of adapters into mobile phone for 44 hours. The best thing about this solar gizmo is its price: it's half that of its (admittedly far more beautiful) rival, the
Solio.
Cost: from £24.95
Available from:
Naturalcollection.com and
Ethicalsuperstore.com

5. Tefal Quick Cup

It's time to make the British tea tradition greener. The average kettle uses around 3,000 watts to boil your brew - that's roughly 300 energy-saving bulbs - which is a carbon nightmare when you consider that 28% of us admitted to overfilling the kettle in a survey earlier this year. The Energy Saving Trust reckons that if we all filled the right amount, the electricity saved could power all of the UK's street lighting. This green kettle automates the job for you by using a reservoir at the back and dispensing instant boiling water from a tap at the front - meaning you don't have to lift it, and thus avoiding the excessive weight problems of its rival, the Plunger kettle. To justify being twice the price of a second competitor, the Eco kettle, it looks as brilliant as a Dyson and has a built-in water filter.Cost: from £59.99Available from: Currys and Argos

6. Citizen Eco Drive black ion-plated watch

The best eco gadgets are the ones you catch yourself lusting over first, only to discover later that they also score greenie points. The latest in Citizen's long-running series of solar-powered watches is a prime example, with a handsome stainless steel build quality that aces its tackier plastic competition, and a discrete solar cell under the face that means you'll never need a new battery. Avoiding the manufacture of a few watch batteries is, of course, just the green icing here: the real energy-saving aspect is that many of us use dead watch batteries as an excuse to upgrade to a new one. And with 18.4m watches sold in the UK in 2003 alone, it'd make a big difference if we all stuck to one watch for life.Cost: £250Available from: Citizen

7. Horizon H-Racer

Like its roadworthy peers, this hydrogen-powered toy car is of little practical use. It does, however, make for a fun, educational and 21st-century twist on the chemistry set, complete with an environmental theme. The car comes as a kit for eco junior to build, and is powered through a mini solar panel that creates enough electricity to create a small light show and turn tap water into hydrogen.
Cost: £60
Available from:
Horizonfuelcell.com and
Science Museum

8. Reware solar beach tote

We've had the solar backpack, the solar messenger bag, the prototype solar handbag and the concept solar briefcase. Now meet the one that surely should have come first: the solar beach bag. Reware, which makes this cotton carrier, has a good track record on solar bags, having produced the world's first with flexible panels. Its beach bag only works in real-time - to keep weight and cost down, there's no battery - but when the sun is shining on your exotic beach, you simply plug anything smaller than a laptop into the car charger socket to top up. Most mobiles should hit full after four hours of charging.Cost: $250 (ship to UK for £124 plus postage)Available from: Rewarestore.com

9. USBCell

As a nation, we sent 19,000 tonnes of batteries to landfill in 2000. Meanwhile, rechargeable batteries that save cash in the long run despite higher upfront costs still make up a fraction of the ones we buy. That's why I love these unique USB-connector ones that render clunky battery chargers obsolete.Cost: from £7.99 for twoAvailable from: Usbcell.com and Play.com

10. One to look out for: Asus EcoBook

You can already buy a bamboo-clad monitor and keyboard, so it should come as no surprise that you'll soon be able to buy a laptop clad in the wonder grass. Bamboo has recently been deployed as an eco material in socks, towels and much more besides because it grows incredibly fast and requires little water and chemicals to grow. The EcoBook itself is more symbolic than world-changing - only the panels are made from bamboo - but if enough people buy one, rival PC makers might finally get the message and start producing greener machines.
Cost: £TBC (on sale later this year)
Available from:
uk.asus.com